"In that case," Chakrabarti said pragmatically, "we probably ought to reinforce Sidemore to offset this 'show of force' of Francis's."
"It's not my show of force, Simon," Jurgensen calmly corrected.
"Whatever." Chakrabarti waved a dismissive hand. "We still ought to consider deploying at least a couple of more battle squadrons to Sidemore, whoever's show of force it is."
"Um." Janacek rubbed an index finger in slow circles on his desktop and frowned down at it. "I can follow your thinking, Simon, but coming up with that much tonnage isn't going to be easy."
Chakrabarti looked at him for a moment, but decided against pointing out that finding the necessary ships of the wall might have been easier if the Government hadn't just decided to scrap so many of them. For all his bureaucratic career track, he'd spent too many decades as a naval officer not to recognize the bitter irony of the situation. He was also too experienced as a uniformed politician to make the point.
"Easy or not, Sir Edward," he said instead, his voice just a tiny bit more formal, "if we're going to stand by our current policy to discourage Andie adventurism, then we need to beef up Sidemore. We don't have to use the new pod superdreadnoughts, but we have to deploy something that would at least be more than purely symbolic. If we don't, we're effectively telling them we're not prepared to go to the mat."
Janacek looked up, and the First Space Lord met his gaze levelly. Then Jurgensen cleared his throat.
"Actually," he said carefully, "it might be wiser to send some of the SD(P)s, after all."
"Oh?" Chakrabarti looked at the Second Space Lord and frowned.
"Yes," Jurgensen said. "I've been conducting a general review of our intelligence on the Andermani over the last week or two, and I've come across a few...disturbing reports."
"Disturbing reports about what, Francis?" Janacek asked, joining Chakrabarti in frowning at him.
"They're not very specific," Jurgensen replied. "That's the main reason they haven't already been passed along to you, Edward. I know you prefer hard data to vague speculation, so we've been trying to confirm them first. Under the circumstances, however, even though they're still unconfirmed, I think we have to take them into account when we consider what sort of reinforcements Sidemore might require."
"Which would be much easier to do if you'd tell us what they say," Chakrabarti pointed out.
"I'll have a precis to you by the end of the day," Jurgensen promised. "Essentially, though, we've had some indicationsnone of them, as I say, confirmedthat the Andies may recently have begun deploying some new weapons systems of their own. Unfortunately, we don't have very many details about just what sort of hardware we may be talking about."
"And you didn't see fit to bring this information to our attention?" Janacek inquired ominously.
"I wasn't even aware of its existence until two weeks ago," Jurgensen said. "And prior to this meeting, the possibility of deploying additional forces to deter the Andies hadn't even been discussed. Under the previously existing circumstances, I felt that it would be advisable to attempt to confirm the information one way or another before bringing it to your attention."
Janacek frowned at him for several seconds, then shrugged.
"Either way, there wouldn't have been much we could have done until you did confirm it," he conceded, and Jurgensen nodded calmly. "But I can't say I'm happy to hear about it, whether it's confirmed or not," the First Lord continued. "The Andies' hardware was almost as good as ours before the war; if they've improved theirs since, we may have to seriously reconsider force levels in Silesia. The Prime Minister isn't going to like hearing about that less than four months after we finished telling Parliament we're making further reductions in our wall."
Jurgensen and Chakrabarti nodded solemnly, secure in the knowledge that they had proposed nothing of the sort, whatever the civilian lords of Admiralty might have had to say about it. Of course, neither of them had protested the reductions, but that was entirely different from bearing responsibility for them.
"What sort of details do you have?" Chakrabarti asked after a moment.
"Almost none, actually," Jurgensen admitted. "A Sidemorian analyst claims that visual imagery of one of the IAN's new Thor class battlecruisers shows fewer missile ports than the class is supposed to have. Exactly what that might mean, we currently have no idea, and we haven't yet confirmed his claim with an independent analysis of the imagery. The raw visual take is on its way here, but we won't see it for another week or two.
"In addition, we have two reports from merchant skippers suggesting that the Andies may have managed at least some improvement in their inertial compensators. The evidence is extremely sketchy, but both of the captains involved report observing Andermani ships pulling accelerations considerably higher than they should have been."
"Merchant skippers!" Chakrabarti snorted, but Jurgensen shook his head.
"That was my own initial reaction, Simon, which is one reason I wanted to get confirmation before reporting it. But one of the merchant captains involved is a half-pay admiral."
"What?" Janacek eyes sharpened. "Which half-pay admiral?"
"An Admiral Bachfisch," Jurgensen replied.
"Oh, him!" Janacek snorted. "I remember now. A fuck-up who almost got his ship blown out of space!"
"Not, perhaps, the best possible reference for someone's resume," Jurgensen agreed. "But he is an experienced man, with over thirty T-years on active duty before he, um, left active naval service."
Janacek snorted again, although with a bit less panache this time. Chakrabarti, on the other hand, suddenly looked more thoughtful, and Jurgensen twitched one shoulder.
"There are a half dozen other reports, most of them from independent stringers run by our naval attaches in the Empire, that indicate the Andies have at least been experimenting with longer ranged missiles, and we've known for years now that they've been developing their own pods. What we don't know, and what I haven't found a way to confirm one way or the other yet, is whether or not they've begun laying down SD(P)s of their own."
"Find a way to confirm it, one way or the other." There was an edge in Janacek's voice. His estimates of necessary force levels had been predicated upon maintaining the RMN's monopoly on the new superdreadnought types. His reports to the Cabinet hadn't even considered the possibility that the Andermani might already be beginning construction of their own SD(P)s.
There wasn't any reason to bring it up, he told himself defensively. It's the Peeps we have to worry about; not the Andies. If we had to, we could survive letting them have the entire Confederacy, in the short term, at least. Besides, Francis hadn't said a word to me about it then.
"In the meantime," he continued, turning back to Chakrabarti, "I need firm proposals from you on the exact strength we need to transfer to Sidemore."
"Do you want me to use worst-case assumptions?" the First Space Lord asked, and Janacek shook his head.
"Not worse-case. We don't need to frighten ourselves into overreacting when none of this has even been confirmed by Intelligence. Assume some improvements in their capabilities, but let's not get carried away."
"That still leaves a lot of uncertainty, Ed," Chakrabarti pointed out, and Janacek frowned. "I just want to be certain I base my proposals on what you want them based on," the admiral said.
"All right," Janacek said, "assume their present capabilities are approximately equal to what ours were, say, six T-years ago. No SD(P)s, no Ghost Rider, and no CLACs, but otherwise assume that they have everything we had, including the new compensators."